At the present time, the methods generally used to assemble electronic curcuitry employing surface-mounted components on a recipient material essentially amount to arbitrary determination of component locations considering only electrical/electronic circuitry requirements and what is most expedient for the electronics draftsperson, with respect to component orientation, then etching or printing conductors on recipient material to support circuitry so determined. This arbitrary method of determining component locations and orientation has the disadvantage of causing difficulty when using automatic component placement devices to place surface-mounted components because the automatic devices must be adjusted to place components at each arbitrarily chosen point. After the recipient material is prepared, the surface-mounted components are placed in their appropriate positions using manual methods or by automatic electromechanical component placement devices. Manual methods have the disadvantage of being labor intensive and result in component placement rates of only 400 to 700 per hour. The relatively slow manual placement rates result from the fact that the assembly person must first deposit a small, metered amount of adhesive material onto the recipient material, one deposit at a time and then manipulate the component into position with tweezers. The tweezers, or in some instances, vacuum-type pickup devices, are required because of the small size of the components. Automatic electromechanicl component placement devices usually consist of several component handling segments, each segment, when properly adjusted, has the capability to deposit adhesive and one component on the recipient material during each cycle of the device. Surface-mounted components mounted on paper tape is the most common way to feed components to these electromechanical surface-mounted component placement devices. Each segment of the device must be fed a tape containing the appropriate component to be placed by that segment. The electromechanical mechanisms in each segment mechanically remove the component from the paper tape, mechanically manipulate it into position, then place the component into the adhesive on the recipient material using various forms of mechanical positioners. Because of the complexity of electromechanical surface-mounted component placement devices, they have the disadvantage of being relatively expensive, with prices ranging from about $50,000.00 for small semi-automatic models, to $750,000 or more for large, computer-controlled models. While the electromechanical surface-mounted component placement devices do significantly increase component placement rates to typically 10,000 to 15,000 per hour, they have another disadvantage in that the maximum length and width dimensions of the recipient material they can handle is about four inches by four inches.
To overcome these disadvantages of the existing methods, the present invention is developed as a system to systematize surface-mounted electronic component placement and is comprised of three primary supportive devices, the first of which defines in an identifiable manner, all possible surface-mounted component location points available in the system. The large number of possible component location points available per unit area of recipient material, lends flexibility to the system in that the draftsperson still has considerable latitude as to where a component may be placed, but the system requires that the draftsperson choose a specific point within the system for each component to be placed on the recipient material. The second supportive device is an adhesive dispensing device capable of applying to the recipient, a wide variety of adhesive materials at all component location points or any specific component location point within the system simultaneously with one cycle of the device, rather than one point per cycle as is the case with existing methods. The third supportive device is a component placement device which has no requirement for the mechanical component manipulation mechanisms found in existing surface-mounted component placement devices. The elimination of mechanical mechanisms greatly simplifies construction of the component placement device used in this system and significantly lowers the cost, thereby making the advantages of surface-mounted components as well as the advantages of mechanized component placement devices, more readily available to more electronic equipment manufacturers. Like the adhesive dispensing device, the component placement device in this system is designed to place components at any, or all, of the system's possible component location points. This is accomplished by precisely positioning the recipient material to the various predetermined component location points about the fixed component placement mechanisms, rather than adjusting each component placement mechanism to place a component at a desired point on the recipient material as is the case with existing component placement devices. Since each possible component location point within the system is identifiable, it can be programmed into a computerized system, and because it can be easily computerized, this system has the added advantage of being able to be readily integrated into existing computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing systems.
An object of the invention is to overcome disadvantages of existing systems.
Other objects and advantages will becomore more apparent from the following detailed description of the invention.